


Having It All (Bringing Love Together Remix)

by wintercreek



Category: Glee
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Remix, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/pseuds/wintercreek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The old Jesse St. James would have looked around himself and wondered who would believe, when the authorized biography and the many unauthorized biographies came out, that this was his beautiful life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Having It All (Bringing Love Together Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bessemerprocess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Thursday Interlude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/96836) by [bessemerprocess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess). 



> Thanks to Laceblade for betaing!

At the time, Jesse hadn't seen Rachel since 2012. Not since he'd watched Rachel walk away with Finn Hudson and spoke with Carmen Tibideaux outside the National Show Choir competition. When he finds himself standing in an off-off-Broadway theatre and looking at Rachel Barbra Berry herself, he tries to summon his cool to face her with. But just the thought of Carmen Tibideaux has made that a lost cause. The only people he's ever respected have been intimidating women: Shelby Corcoran, Carmen Tibideaux, and Rachel Berry.

"Jesse, hi!" she calls as she walks toward him. "It's so good to see you again. I couldn't believe it when they told me they'd cast you."

"Because I'm not good enough, you mean?" he snaps. "In case you've missed it, Rachel, this is off-off-Broadway. Nothing here is good enough for you."

Rachel gapes at him. "What– I–"

"If you feel like explaining why you're slumming it, I'm all ears." Jesse turns and strides away, ostensibly looking for his dressing room.

It's not their best reintroduction. The time he'd walked into the McKinley auditorium and surprised her with "Rolling in the Deep" before prom had been far better.

* * *

His reintroduction to Quinn Fabray doesn't go much better. He and Rachel have made it through rehearsals, conjuring up some kind of collegiality, and now they're out at a bar celebrating the advent of preview week. Rachel's sitting under a blue light, which somehow does not make her look like a Smurf. Just as Jesse decides he'll go over and try being social with her, now that they've found a professional equilibrium, a stunning blonde woman comes in and Rachel waves. Jesse watches the blonde cross the room and kiss Rachel hello.

Jesse rapidly readjusts several of his assumptions. Then he adjusts them again when he recognizes the woman as Quinn Fabray. "All that tension was sexual after all," he murmurs. Peter from the cast, sitting next to him, raises an eyebrow. Jesse waves a dismissing hand at him.

Before he can decide whether to go over to them or execute a strategic retreat, Rachel turns on her barstool and points at him. "Busted," Jesse mutters. Peter looks questioningly at him again, and Jesse scowls. "I'm not going to stifle my personal monologue for you," he says. And he turns to find Quinn standing right next to him.

"Hi, Jesse," Quinn says. "Rachel told me you were in the cast, but I haven't seen you out with everyone. How's life treating you outside the show?"

Swallowing, Jesse puts on an air of confidence and answers, "Very well, thanks. That's a nice suit; it looks like you're doing well for yourself too."

Quinn shrugs. "Intellectual property and entertainment law. It pays the bills well enough that I can mostly keep Rachel in the manner to which she's accustomed."

"Although I could become accustomed to other manners, if needed," Rachel adds.

Jesse makes himself stay and chat with them until his drink is gone, swallowing his jealousy down with his whiskey. With his luck, Kurt Hummel and some gorgeous boyfriend will be at opening night, and then Finn Hudson will turn out to be wildly successful, just to make sure Jesse knows how far he is from what he'd dreamed of in high school. Of course his dreams of success and love belong to the people he'd mostly scorned. "Ironic," he sighs, covering it with another sip at his drink.

* * *

Jesse thinks he's being invited to another awkward dinner as a third wheel with his two amazing, shockingly beautiful, monogamously involved with each other, female friends. They let him keep thinking this for several glasses of wine.

"We were wondering," Quinn says, cool as a cucumber, "what you thought of polyamory."

Rachel chokes. She coughs hard and cries "Quinn! This is not what we agreed on. We agreed on a sensitive, tactful approach."

Quinn lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. "Jesse doesn't really do subtlety," she says. "Remember how he stared at us in the bar when we first re-met?"

"Okay, that was not my fault," Jesse huffs. "Both of you were something of a shock when you re-entered my life. And I guess you're not done being shocking."

"No." A small grin is creeping on to Quinn's face. "So. Your views on polyamory."

Jesse looks from one to the other. "I don't know much about how it works, but I think I could learn," he says.

"Well. Thankfully, we are excellent teachers," Rachel declares, preening.

"That's just what I was hoping," Jesse says, and sits back to listen. If this works out, he's going to be out-maneuvered forever, but he's going to be happy anyway.

* * *

Their marriage, when it comes, is a complicated affair. Quinn draws up their legal paperwork, and they spend hours debating whether two of them ought to have a civil ceremony rather than all three of them relying on powers of attorney and other papers.

Jesse argues long and hard for Quinn and Rachel marrying. "Any kids we have will be related to one or the other of you," he says. "This way, none of them get left out of inheritance or custody or whatever."

"Eloquent," Quinn says.

"You're the lawyer," Jesse retorts. "I'm just saying, if I marry one of you, that leaves the other one out."

Rachel frowns. "But if Quinn and I got legally married, it would leave _you_ out. And any kids we have will be related to you too, you know. We're hardly going to need donor sperm when one of the potential parents has his own."

"We're not leaving anyone out," Quinn pronounces. "If there's anything I learned from watching my parents, it's that I'm not interested in an unequal marriage. I'll make our legal paperwork as comprehensive as I can, and that's it."

Jesse shrugs. "Okay. I trust you."

And that's how they come to be standing under a chuppah in their backyard, watched by a small audience of their friends and Rachel's dads. A surprising number of people they knew in high school are here now: Kurt Hummel, who's composing Broadway musicals these days and says he's working on one that's tailor-made for Rachel and Jesse; Finn Hudson, who was invited by both brides for sentimental reasons and has at least finally taken enough anger management courses that Jesse felt comfortable agreeing to his presence; Tina Cohen-Chang, now married to Mike Chang after their tumultuous college years, the pair of them sitting on the aisle and smiling with the empathy of newlyweds.

Mercedes Jones, who'd changed career paths from recording artist to Methodist pastor, can't marry them. Rachel asked, and Quinn asked, and Mercedes shook her head sadly and said she could offer a blessing but not a whole ceremony. So Jesse called Delilah, who was in the revival of _Cinderella_ with him, and asked if she felt it would be okay for her to marry a Jewish woman, a Christian woman, and an atheist man. Delilah'd laughed and said she didn't think the Universal Life Church cared what she did with her ordination, now that they'd charged her credit card.

The three of them wrote their ceremony together, incorporating a ketubah and a prayer and many songs, lighting a unity candle and exchanging personal vows and, at the end, Quinn and Rachel each holding one of Jesse's hands as he stomps on a wine glass. The glass breaks, and Delilah says, "Just as the broken glass can never be undone, now this can never be undone: you are married."

* * *

Quinn groans and squeezes Jesse's hand so hard he thinks a bone might have broken, and he does not dare let go. He has heard what happens to men who fail their wives in the midst of labor.

"I have a sudden, surprising urge to sing Queen," he whispers to Rachel.

Rachel rolls her eyes. "Think about that for a while," she advises. "The reason will come to you."

"When you're done reminiscing," Quinn says, "I could use some more ice chips. You know, since I'm the one doing all the work here."

As Rachel departs with an empty cup, Jesse takes a deep breath. "Quinn, I want to talk to you about something."

"Up, up, I need to walk," she says. "And sure, Jesse, what?"

Jesse puts his hands lightly on her hips, ready to sway with her through the next contraction if she wants it, and shuffles slowly backwards, supporting Quinn. "I want to stay home with the baby."

"You wha– Ohhhhhhhhh," Quinn moans, voice dropping. She comes back from the contraction, lifting her gaze to Jesse's face. "You want to stay home?"

"I—" Jesse starts, but Rachel's back and their focus shifts to ice chips, and more shuffling, and then Quinn's water breaks and everything starts moving faster.

When it's all over, when Nate's resting in Quinn's arms and Rachel's sniffling and clasping her hands, Jesse reaches out for his son. Quinn hands him over, so gently.

Jesse gazes down at him. "Hi, little man," he says to Nate. He looks back up at Rachel and Quinn and finally finishes his thought from hours ago. "I want to stay home with Nate. With all our kids." He cuddles Nate close. "My parents were never home. I need to be here. There. Where our children are. I need to give them better than I got."

"Oh Jesse," Rachel sighs. She puts a hand on his arm. "Of course."

"Yes," Quinn agrees. "Rachel _or_ I make enough money for all of us, anyway, especially now that the house is paid for."

Rachel looks exasperated. "Do you ever get tired of being practical?"

As his wives bicker fondly, Jesse shifts his hold so he can use one hand to trace Nate's tiny, perfect face. "Welcome to our family," he says.

* * *

The old Jesse St. James would have looked around himself and wondered who would believe, when the authorized biography and the many unauthorized biographies came out, that this was his beautiful life. He knows no one's ever going to profile him now, although he is going to be a thread in Rachel's profiles. He doesn't need fame anymore.

The empty, gnawing place inside him that his childhood left, the place he'd thought would only be filled by applause, is filled with his lovely wives, his amazing children. Jesse is the world's happiest stay-at-home dad now. It's better.

He does miss it. When they go to see Rachel, glowing on the stage, and he and Quinn sigh and thumb wrestle for who will step out with the fussing baby or the fidgety toddler, he misses it. Even the vicarious experience of performance and accolade is hard to keep his hands on when the children take so much of his attention, waking or sleeping. Sometimes he thinks about what he'll do when they're all finally grown. That's still eighteen years away, longer if they have another baby after this one.

In the next room, Jesse can hear Rachel and Quinn talking. They've told Molly goodnight, and Gabe and Cooper are curled up on the couch with him. He looks up as Rachel and Quinn come into the den, Rachel's belly moving as the baby does another somersault. Rachel frowns and whispers, "Careful in there, please. Mama needs her abdomen intact."

"It's the weirdest thing, isn't it?" Quinn says. "I remember thinking it couldn't get more surreal than Nate squirming around, like maybe I'd just forgotten how much Beth moved, and then I had Cooper, and wow. Abdominal relaxation really does make those baby movements _so_ much more dramatic."

Rachel nods emphatically. "This might be my last one."

Jesse shrugs. "That's up to you, babe," he says. He turns back to the movie. The volume is down so low he can't hear it, but he doesn't need to hear it to enjoy it. It's _Star Wars_. In the flickering light of the TV, Jesse catches sight of his wives in the mirror over the fireplace. They're smiling at each other. Here, with his best and most important audience, Jesse smiles too.


End file.
